I agree with most of what you say but I think companies should still have to provide some of the finance themselves.

The reason for this is that whatever they are building needs to be financially viable and robust enough to survive on its own once a NASA contract has finished, if NASA pays all the bills where is the proof of this. NASA has not shown that it is able to distinguish between what is viable and what is not when you look back at all its past failed and cancelled projects. Let the market be the arbitor.

Where NASA could help is by definitely providing follow on contracts once a system has been proven and I agree that COTS would benefit greatly from having more money and a wider range of projects but I guess that this is a bit of an experiment for NASA so I cant see that happening.

Please loose all the highlighting and colours it makes your articles look like they were written by a 10 year old.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I think companies should still have to provide some of the finance themselves.

that puts dozens (possible) good projects out of the game

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Its not possible to fund everything and if it is a good enough project it should be able to attract finance from elsewhere. I'd rather see funding concentrate on 6 to 10 good projects than spread thinly across a lot more.

What you are advocating is repeating what NASA is already doing on a larger scale what I think would be better is spend money wisely in a few select places so that it has the best chance of bearing fruit. A few well funded projects is better than a lot of badly funded ones and increasing COTS money to a point where NASA could adequately fund dozens is unrealistic and not going to happen.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

It could be reasonably expected that each of those projects would be more efficient than if Nasa ran them themselves.

Even if it cost more to out source it all, it would be better economically to have such a grouping of companies providing generic services. They would be able to turn around and offer the services to other players where Nasa is prohibited from doing so.